• Z-Man Games also announced the opening of preorders for Christian Marcussen's Clash of Cultures – but only if you're picking up the game at BGG.CON 2012 in Dallas in mid-November. Interesting to see BGG.CON pegged for the prerelease of a big item...

• To continue with the trend of Spiel 2012 releases seeing new life, Ignacy Trzewiczek's Robinson Crusoe – which already had an English edition from Z-Man Games announced in early October 2012 – will see a German edition from Pegasus Spiele and a French edition from Filosofia Édition. Both of these new editions will be released in 2013.

• Timeline: Events from designer Frédéric Henry and publisher Asmodee hit the U.S. market on October 15, 2012 (with the release in France having come a few months earlier), and Timeline: Diversity is due out in the U.S. on November 21, 2012. For those not familiar with the Timeline game system, a system in which any of the games can be mixed with any of the others, here's a brief description:

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Each Timeline card depicts a historical event on both sides, with the year in which that event occurred on only one side. Players take turns placing a card from their hand in a row on the table. After placing the card, the player reveals the date on it. If the card was placed correctly with the date in chronological order with all other cards on the table, the card stays in place; otherwise the card is removed from play and the player takes another card from the deck.

The first player to get rid of all his cards by placing them correctly wins. If multiple players go out in the same round, then everyone else is eliminated from play and each of those players are dealt one more card for another round of play. If only one player has no cards after a bonus round, he wins; otherwise play continues until a single player goes out.

• Dominique Bodin's On the Dot is coming out in a new edition from Brainwright, a brand name used by parent company Ceaco – owner of Gamewwright, the publisher of the previous English-language edition – for its line of logic puzzles and puzzle-y games. As for why the game has shifted from its old big tin dotty box to new streamlined packaging, not to mention from the game brand to the puzzle brand, a blog post from Gamewright explains:

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While On the Dot was part of the Gamewright line, two of the biggest comments we received were, "This is a fantastic solitaire game." and "This would be great for travel if it were only smaller." So when we were developing our Brainwright line, we knew that On the Dot was the perfect candidate for a redesign. We streamlined the package to maximize portability and focused on letting people know about the solo play mode.